Bad Advice for New Graduates

by P. J. O’Rourke

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Mr. O'Rourke is a best-selling author and humorist.
Change magazine reports on trends and issues in higher education. It
is published by Heldref Publications, Washington DC.

Well, here you are
at your college graduation. And I know what you're thinking: "Gimme the
sheepskin and get me outta here!" Not so fast. First you have to listen to a
commencement speech.

Don't moan. I'm not going to "pass the wisdom of
one generation down to the next." I'm a member of the 1960s generation. We
didn't have any wisdom.

We were the moron generation. We were the
generation who believed we could stop the war in Vietnam by growing our hair
long and dressing like circus clowns. We believed drugs would change
everything—which they did, for John Belushi. We believed in free love.
And the love was free, but we ended up paying a very high price for the
sex.

My generation spoiled everything for you. It has always been the
special prerogative of youth to look and act weird and shock the grown-ups.
But my generation exhausted the earth's resources of weird. Weird
clothes—we wore them. Weird beards—we grew them. Weird words and
phrases—we said them. So, when it came your turn to look and act
weird, you had to tattoo your faces and pierce your tongues.

Ouch.
That must have hurt. I apologize.

True, my generation did have some
good musicians. But those musicians are still out there touring. Therefore
the only piece of good advice that I can give you is, don't start a rock
band. You won't stand a chance against the Rolling Stones.

It's my job
to give you advice. But all the rest of the advice I'm going to give you is
bad advice. I figure it this way: You're finishing 16 years of education,
and you've had all the good advice you can stand. Let me offer some
relief.

1. Go out and make a bunch of money!

Here we are in the most prosperous country in the
world, surrounded by all the comforts, conveniences, and security that money
can provide, yet no American political, intellectual or cultural leader ever
says to American young people, "Go out and make a bunch of money." They say
money can't buy happiness. But it can rent it.

There's nothing the
matter with honest money-making. Wealth is not a pizza where if I have too
many slices you have to eat the Domino's box. In a free society, with the
rule of law and property rights, no one loses when someone else gets
rich.

2. Don't be an idealist!

Don't chain yourself to a redwood tree. Go be a corporate lawyer and make $500,000
a year. If you make $500,000 a year, no matter how much you try to cheat the
IRS, you'll end up paying $100,000 in taxes—property taxes, sales
taxes, excise taxes. That's $100,000 worth of schools and sewers, fire
fighters and police. You'll be doing good for society. Does chaining
yourself to a redwood tree do society $100,000 worth of
good?

Idealists are also bullies. The idealist is saying, "I care more
about the redwood trees than you do. Oh, I know you care. But you only care
as much as you have to. I care and care and care. I care so much I can't
eat, I can’t sleep, it broke up my marriage. And because I care more
than you do, I'm a better person than you are. And because I'm a better
person than you are, I have the right to boss you around."

Get a pair of bolt-cutters and unleash that tree from the idealist.

Who does more to save the redwoods anyway—the person who’s chained to a tree
or the person who founds the "Green Travel Redwood Tree-Hug Tour Company"
and makes a million by turning redwoods into a resource more valuable than
backyard deck railings, a resource that people will pay hundreds of dollar
just to go look at?

So get rich. Don't be an idealist. And . . .

3. Get politically uninvolved!

Politics stink—and not just bad politics. All politics stink. Even democracy
stinks. Imagine if our clothes were selected by the majority of shoppers,
which would be teenage girls. I'd be standing here with my midriff exposed.
Imagine deciding what's for dinner by family secret ballot. I've got three
kids and three dogs in my family. We'd be having Fruit Loops and rotten
meat.

Think how we use the word politics. Are "office politics" ever a
good thing? When somebody "plays politics" to get a promotion, does he or
she deserve it? When we call a co-worker "a real politician," is that a
compliment?

But let me make a distinction between politics and
politicians. Some people are under the misapprehension that the problem is
politicians—certain politicians who stink. Impeach George Bush, and
everything will be fine. Nab Ted Kennedy on a DUI, and the nation’s
problems will be solved.

But the problem isn't politicians—it's
politics. Politicians are chefs, some good, some bad. The problem isn't the
cook. The problem is the food. Or let me restate that: The problem isn't the
cook. The problem is the cookbook. The key ingredient of politics is the
belief that all of society's ills can be cured politically. This is like a
cookbook where the recipe for everything is to fry it. The fruit cocktail is
fried. The soup is fried. The salad is fried. So is the ice cream and cake.
The pinot noir is rolled in bread crumbs and dunked in the deep-fat fryer.
This is no way to cook up public policy.

Politics is greasy. Politics
is slippery. Politics can't tell the truth. But we can't blame the
politicians for that. Because just think what the truth would sound like on
the campaign stump, even a little bitty bit of truth:

"No, I can't fix
public education. The problem isn't funding or teachers' unions or a lack of
vouchers or an absence of computer equipment in the classrooms. The
problem is your kids!"

4. Forget about fairness!

We all get confused about what role politics should play in
life. This is because politics and life send contradictory
messages.

Life sends us the message, "I'd better not be poor. I'd
better get rich. I'd better make more money than other people." Meanwhile
politics sends us the message, "Some people make more money than other
people. Some people are rich and others are poor. We'd better close that
'income disparity gap.' It's so unfair!”

Well, I'm here to speak
in favor of unfairness. I've got a ten-year-old at home. And she's always
saying, "That’s not fair." When she says that, I say, "Honey, you're
cute. That's not fair. Your family is pretty well off. That's
not fair. You were born in America. That's not fair. Darling, you had
better pray to God that things don't start getting fair for
you.”

To heck with the income disparity gap. What we need is
more income, even if it means a bigger gap.

5. Be a religious extremist!

So don't get involved with politics if you
can help it, but if you can't help it, read the Bible for political
advice—even if you're a Buddhist or an atheist or whatever. Using
politics to create fairness is a sin. The Bible is very clear about
this.

"Oh, gosh," you're thinking, "this is the worst advice yet. We
get federal funding here. And the commencement speaker has just violated
Constitutional law about separation of church and state."

But hear me
out. I am not, in fact, one of those people who believes that God is
involved in politics. My attitude is: Observe politics in this country.
Observe politics around the world. Observe politics down through history.
Does it look like God's involved? No, that would be Other Fellow
who’s the political activist.

However, in one sense I do get my
politics from the Bible, specifically from the 10th Commandment. The first
nine Commandments concern theological principles and social law: Thou shalt
not make graven images, steal, kill, et cetera. Fair enough. But then
there’s the 10th: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house. Thou
shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his
maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy
neighbor's."

Here are God's basic rules about how we should live, a
brief list of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts. And right at the
end of it is "Don't envy your buddy's cow." How did that make the top ten?
Why would God, with just ten things to tell Moses, chose as one of them
jealousy about livestock?

And yet think about how important this
Commandment is to a community, to a nation, to a democracy. If you want a
mule, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don’t
whine about what the people across the street have. Go get your
own.

So do get rich. Don't be an idealist. Stay out of politics.
Forget about fairness. And I have another piece of advice:

6. Whenever you're unsure about what course to take in
life, ask yourself, "What would France do?"

You see, France is a
treasure to mankind. French ideas, French beliefs, and French actions form a
sort of loadstone for humanity. Because a moral compass needle needs a butt
end. Whatever direction France is pointing in—toward Nazi
collaboration, Communism, existentialism, Jerry Lewis movies, or President
Sarkozy's personal life—you can go the other way with a clear
conscience.

One last thing.

7. Don't listen to your elders!

After all, if the old person standing up here
actually knew anything worth telling, he'd be charging you for
it.

P. J. O'Rourke is the author of twelve books, most recently On
The Wealth of Nations. He is a correspondent for The Weekly Standard
and The Atlantic. He attended Miami University and Johns Hopkins and received his
diplomas from both schools in the mail.